The River Wild

by Denis O'Neill

  As he moved from car to car, from pissed-off driver to pissed-off driver, the young trooper dredged up the ones that had a bearing on persistence. The harder I work, the luckier I get, came to mind. Billy liked to run through them in his head not only because some of them were actually useful, but because reciting them to the lieutenant at appropriate junctures seemed the best way to express his admiration for his mentor.

  Trooper Page Noel was on bloodhound duty once more, just a “bay” away from Billy and the long line of traffic. Accompanied by a representative of the rail line, he oversaw teams of troopers and dogs that made their way from freight car to freight car, checking for unwanted passengers. It was tedious work in the hot sun—the unrefrigerated cars poured out blasts of even hotter air when they were clanged open. The symphony of honking horns and baying bloodhounds was joined by the new acoustic of a State Police helicopter clattering overhead, close to the ground, heading west—tracking the forty-ninth parallel for any suspicious foot traffic. It wasn’t Appalachian Spring, but to the fifty-eight residents of Sweet Grass it was a tune they had heard before—the price of marking a border crossing. Below the chopper, miles from Sweet Grass, a phalanx of heavily armed troopers and other law enforcement personnel marched a yard apart, combing the landscape for any signs of the escapees, sector by sector. It was a grueling assignment under a blazing sun across uneven terrain, but it was boots on the ground—the foundation of textbook manhunt procedure.

  ** ** **

  Warden Leroy Hesse ushered Bobby Long into his office on the sixty-eight-acre compound of the Montana State Prison, three miles outside of Deer Lodge. The prison held fifteen hundred inmates in a facility designed to handle maximum-, medium-, and minimum-risk prisoners. Before people came here to be incarcerated, the earliest visitors to the area were lured by the relatively pleasant weather in the protected valley. The same was true for the local deer population, which preferred the warmer climes to the colder temperatures in the surrounding high country, as well as the appeal of a natural salt lick produced by a geologic formation known as Warm Springs Mound.

  Neither the salt nor the weather brought Long to the area, but some early ranch hand work here had taught him how to rope and ride. Later, he had delivered many a prisoner to the Big House as a young trooper. Warden Hesse was an acquaintance from his rodeo days—a former ranch hand himself, who’d decided babysitting hard cases was easier than delivering breached calves on frigid winter nights.

  Bobby Long and Leroy Hesse shook hands warmly and swapped brief hunting and fishing conquests before getting to the heart of the matter: the early and unauthorized release of two maximum security inmates.

  “Anything new?” the warden asked.

  Bobby Long shook his head. “Not yet. Anybody hear anything in the yard?”

  “No one who’s talking. Deke was the big man on campus. Equally feared and revered.” The warden hit his intercom. “Bring in the prisoner.” Then he said to Long, “There is one new development.”

  A burly female marshall escorted a woman into the office and steered her into the empty seat beside Trooper Long. She wore a tan state corrections jumpsuit. Her hands were cuffed in front of her. She was heavyset, with a doughy face, thinning hair, and horn-rimmed glasses. The marshall stood behind her.

  “This is Roberta Burrows. She worked for many years in the food department, here at the facility. She took a shine to Deke going back a bit and helped smuggle him the tools he used to cut and saw his way out. She has confessed to having intimate relations with the prisoner. She was going to meet him with a car and drive him to safety, but she had second thoughts. When she heard about the murder of the school teacher, she turned herself in. We’ve told her any cooperation with law enforcement officials would be taken into consideration at her trial. Ms. Burrows, this is State Police Detective Lieutenant Bob Long. Lieutenant Long is heading up law enforcement pursuit of the fugitives.”

  Bob Long looked at her for a long moment. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. Do you understand?”

  “She’s already waived her rights, Lieutenant.”

  “In writing?”

  Warden Hesse held up a piece of paper.

  “Ms. Burrows, we would like to capture these men before they can harm any more people. Tell me how you first met Deke Patterson, how you managed to smuggle them tools, and if they ever shared with you their destination after you met them with your car.”

  “Deke told me he loved me.”

  Trooper Long sighed. “I’m sure he did. Before we go further, may I tell you what he did to another woman in a car? Snapped her neck, clean. That could have been … no, would have been your neck if you had picked them up as planned. Do you understand that?”

  Tears began to slide down Roberta Burrows’s face.

  “I tell you that because I also know William Deakens Patterson. He’s a diagnosed sociopath. You saved one life—your own—when you abandoned your rendezvous with him. There might be something you can tell me that will save other lives. So think hard.” Trooper Long offered a sympathetic smile. “No time like the present, Ms. Burrows.”

  Roberta Burrows rubbed a sleeve across her tear-streaked face. She took a deep breath, began to talk.

  11

  Camp was struck and the rafts packed an hour or so after breakfast. It was a leisurely start intended by Gail to let the river melt away the urban tempo they lugged to its banks, as well as to give Roarke and Tom time to fish good water before it was pounded by other fishermen.

  Roarke sat at the oars of his raft, now bobbing in shallow water, held by Gail. Terry manned the oars in Jim and Peter’s raft, with Deke holding the nose. Tom, farther inland, cupped a hand to his mouth, shouted: “Maggie! C’mon girl!! C’mon Mags!! Boat’s leaving!” He turned to Roarke. “Give her the old two fingers.”

  Roarke let fly with an ear-piercing whistle. Everybody stared at the gentle upslope into the steeper canyon wall behind the campsite.

  Maggie heard the shouts and the whistle and barked back. She was some fifty yards from the fire pit, out of view—halfway up a slope of scrub trees and fallen leaves. She was pawing like crazy at the ground. Dirt flew between her legs as she beetled on, head down. More voices reached her, decidedly more angry in tone, making her more frantic. She barked and whined, stared toward her masters’ voices … worried to be disobeying the command but caught up in what she figured to be a more important assignment.

  On the beach, Tom was losing patience. He heard Maggie’s barks and barked back: “Maggie get your ass down here!” He stepped closer to the barking. “Last chance Maggie!”

  Sensing a parental meltdown, Roarke unleashed another mighty whistle and a high-pitched, “C’mon Mags! Good girl!” triggering renewed frantic barking from Maggie.

  Tom turned to Gail. “I told you she’d be trouble in the woods.” Exasperated, he headed toward the woods, muttering. He didn’t see Deke and Terry’s silent, anxious exchange.

  Gail apologized to Deke with a look. Deke disarmed her concern. “Dogs will be dogs. Maybe I can help.” He tugged the nose of the raft onshore and hurried after Tom.

  Maggie, meanwhile, had her jaws latched onto something in the ground. She pulled with all her might, repositioning her hind legs for better leverage, slipping on the loose dirt, shaking her head as dogs do when they don’t want to give up a bone or chew toy, growling with frustration.

  Deke looked back to make sure he was out of sight of the rafters before extracting his knife from his pocket and cupping the blade in his palm. Tom had stopped to catch his breath on the slope and try to retrieve Maggie without having to climb all the way up to where he saw her golden coat and flying dirt. “Maggie! ” His voice was all anger. “Maggie,” he shouted, “goddamnit, get down here!”

  Maggie glimpsed Tom some twenty yards away, considered the anger in his voice, and abandoned her mission after a final tug. She bounded down the slope and slowed to a guilty, hunch-shouldered shimmying when sh
e reached Tom. Tom grabbed her firmly by the collar and steered her down the path. “Bad girl, Maggie. Bad girl. Go!” Maggie quickened her pace when Tom relinquished his grip and bounded past Deke, now only a few paces in front of Tom. His proximity gave Tom a start. He shook his head as he brushed past Deke. “Goddamn dog. Maybe a bear will get her.”

  Deke watched him descend, then peered uphill toward where Maggie had been digging. His view was obstructed by the angle of the slope, although he could see scattered fresh dirt. He returned his knife to his pocket and headed back to the river. He knew what Maggie was on to, even if he couldn’t see the results of her excavation. It didn’t matter now. It mattered less to Jim, whose bare forearm angled grotesquely out of the shallow grave, a single, bloody finger pointing ominously downstream.

  Maggie was seated next to Roarke on the rower’s seat when Deke marched up and shoved his and Terry’s raft into deeper water. He climbed into the bow seat, facing Terry. The two rafts drifted slowly side by side in the slack water as Gail gave a brief rowing lesson to the fugitives. “Most of the time you want to keep the river in front of you. So, always bow first, and mostly what you’re doing is steering. Let the current do the work. Okay? Nothing to it. Just follow us. The rougher rapids are days off.” She turned to Roarke, who was at the oars. “Okay, honey, steer us into the main current.”

  Terry watched their raft center itself in the main current and glide downriver with increasing speed. He dipped his oars to follow suit. After a few strokes, they too were in the main current. The raft began to speed up. Terry looked as comfortable as a kid on a bike taking his first unassisted pedal. Deke smiled. “Don’t forget, there’s nothing to it.”

  ** ** **

  A couple miles downriver, Gail took the oars to steer them through a moderate rapid. Roarke and Maggie were in the bow, hunkered in, Roarke’s knees on the floor of the raft.

  “Hold on!” Gail commanded.

  Roarke gripped the bowline where it was knotted to the D ring on the front edge of the bow. Tom, behind Gail, reached left and right to grab onto canvas handles glued atop the raft’s inflated sides.

  “Here we go!” Gail said, as the raft entered the top of the rapid and she altered its trajectory slightly to shoot between a pair of rocks. Roarke howled as the raft snaked over the rapids, the bow rising and dropping, followed by its aft sections as the raft molded itself to the contours of the river like a slinky toy descending steps.

  Behind them, Terry back-paddled to slow their entry into the rapids. The angle of descent was sufficient that he only sporadically caught the tops of Gail, Tom, and Roarke’s heads as the raft roller-coastered up and down. The sight of Gail sliding into calm water at the bottom of the rough water did little to bolster his confidence. He was scared. Deke had slipped off the seat to ride lower in the raft. “You got this?” he asked Terry, hopefully.

  Terry’s eyes were huge as he searched for the best course through. And then they were in it. Terry lost control at the pair of rocks Gail had passed safely between. The nose of the raft bumped into one of the rocks, momentarily arresting their movement. A bucket or more of water surged over the partially submerged bow, soaking Deke as the raft compressed itself against the rock, then the stern shot back as the raft recoiled. The current caught the stern and swung it downstream as Terry flailed with the oars, trying to right his course. The oars were alternately catching water and air. The raft continued its descent out of control, bouncing off a rock here, the canyon wall there, finally plunging through the last piece of white water into the pool below.

  Gail, who had eased into slack water to watch, pulled hard to intercept Terry’s raft like the “pick-up man” in a rodeo who chases down and quiets the bucking bronco, with or without rider.

  Roarke grabbed Terry’s bowline, and Gail back-paddled for the still water that ran toward the beach from the seam. Soon, the two rafts were slow-gliding side by side.

  “Fun, huh?” Gail said, beaming.

  Deke and Terry were white as sheets.

  “Forgot to tell you one thing,” Gail said. “When you see a rock or some other obstacle, and you don’t want to slam into it, point your stern away from it and row upstream. The current’ll do the rest.”

  ** ** **

  Gail loved the ebb and flow of a wilderness river—the very real effect it had on her mind and body. She knew that to surrender to its tempo—to go with the flow—was the natural way to be part of the environment. To become one with the rapids and the pools, with the canyon walls and the sandy beaches, with the sun-blasted sections and the dappled shadow of overhanging canopies. Experience had taught her you fight the flow at your own peril. If you embraced it, your body purred with the pleasure of being in sync with nature.

  Gail shared those very thoughts with Tom and Roarke as they looked down the barrel of an almost half-mile-long straightaway, gazing at the towering cliff to one side and sandy beach to the other. There were alpine meadows visible on the foothills above the beach. The river was at peace with itself. The rock formations were striking, the striations and different shaded chunks of the canyon wall resembling a giant, muted patchwork quilt. Terry and Deke’s raft was visible a hundred yards ahead. Roarke fished from the bow, content to throw his line forty feet out from the raft, mend his line, and watch the big dry fly float without drag … its speed matching that of the boat. Maggie sat beside him, studying the water, paying attention when the odd water ouzel skittered away.

  Tom had his butt wedged between the stern seat and the back of the raft, so that his back and shoulders were supported by the juncture to the tubes at the rear of the raft. He tracked a hawk that dive-bombed a nest of sticks seemingly glued to the cliff wall a hundred feet above the water. A pair of concerned parents—swifts in this case—scrambled to intercept him. They under and overed the raptor, nipping at his head and underside, turning their mission into a blur of flying feathers punctuated by a raucous squawking at the moments of contact. Sufficiently harassed, the hawk peeled away from the cliffs, deciding to find a meal elsewhere. One of the swifts continued to give him a hard time, escorting him like a sheriff to the edge of town. His partner returned to the nest to comfort their babies. Tom smiled at the outcome of this particular outdoor segment. When Swifts go wild!, he joked to himself.

  Gail back-paddled a few more strokes to put even more distance between their raft and Terry’s. Then she shipped the oars, angled her face up to take the direct warmth of the sun. “Tom?”

  “Umm?”

  “Do Terry and Deke seem funny to you?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I don’t know, just funny … off. I mean it’s one thing to take an overnight at a campground. It’s something else to get on a sixty mile wilderness river and not know the blade of the oar from the handle.”

  “Ummm … you mean just like me?”

  “Yeah, but you’re with me.”

  “So are they, thanks to you.”

  “That’s another conversation. I mean, I know some people are happy going places they’ve never been. I get that—embrace your inner Marco Polo. But to get on a wilderness river and not know fuck all … it just strikes me as being not right.”

  ** ** **

  Gail chose a picnic spot she always favored when floating the River Wild. A smooth rock shelf angled gently into the head of a deep, green pool. It was shaded by overhanging pine boughs. She had set up their portable picnic table on the cool stone, just back from where river water dampened the rock. A sandy beach in the sun stretched downstream from the ledge. Both rafts were pulled ashore. The remains of lunch were visible on the table. It was a free period on the river. Maggie and Roarke explored the beach way downstream. Terry was napping in the shaded picnic area. Tom was building a crude architectural model of a house in the sand—using sticks, pebbles, scraps of bark, and so forth. He stood a twig and leaf at one corner of the property—delineated by a line in the sand. It cast a shadow over a corner of the main dwelling. Tom looked up at the sun
, then back at his model. He needed more shade at midday. He shifted the location of the twig tree so that the leaf threw more shade over the dwelling. He sat back on his haunches to study the new results. Gail and Deke had waded out into knee-high water on the ledge, where Gail—wearing a one-piece bathing suit—was giving Deke a fly-casting lesson. Deke was shirtless. Gail stepped back to give him some room to cast. Her eyes took in his lean, chiseled torso, his cut arms were sun-bronzed. She might have been less admiring if she knew his fitness was compliments of a daily routine of pumping iron with fellow felons in the outdoor yard of the Montana State prison in Deer Lodge. Nevertheless, Gail was a physical person—physical response was involuntary. Deke’s body was better than his casting. She couldn’t help but shoot a glance at Tom, on the beach twenty yards away, his slight, unmuscled torso a ghostly shade of white.

  Deke tried a cast, but he dipped the rod tip too far behind him and the fly line collapsed in a tangle over his shoulders. “How’s that?” he said, grinning.

  Gail stepped around in front of him, admiring him from a new angle, trying not to be distracted. “Ah, I think you need some more work. Here …” She stepped behind him once more, reached over his shoulder and wrapped her right arm over his. “The most important thing is line control.”